SUMMARY: The newest communication app on the market is Periscope, which allows users to broadcast a live television feed and interact with viewers in real time – an opportunity news publishers need to explore.

She’s here to stay. And she’s good for your media business. So, people, let’s allow ourselves to fall in love.

We all live in a yellow submarine. And now we have all been invited to follow someone else’s journey through the world and watch the surroundings through another person’s periscope on live television.

Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein are the two founders of the hottest new social media app that is currently transforming the conditions of live television.

Suddenly, you don’t have to invest in expensive television equipment, satelite transmittors, or even a not-so-expensive LiveU unit in a backpack. All you need is your regular smartphone, a Twitter acount, and the Periscope app, and you are good to go.

Apart from the benefits of a regular live television broadcast, the app allows you to receive interactions from your viewers as we can all comment on what we see right on the screen and, with the blink of an eye, share our feedback with the rest of the audience as well as with the person transmitting the feed.

This way, the person, television host, or media company transmitting can easily pick up questions and comments from viewers in real time and have a dialogue with people following the transmission from all around the globe.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I must say that’s a pretty cool invention.

Right now, media executives from all over the world are trying to figure out how Periscope works. Actually it’s been rather entertaining following publishers’ first Bambi steps on their Periscope journey.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve seen one of the CEOs of one of Sweden’s largest media companies shooting his living room couch with shaking hands, too nervous to utter a single word. I also had the opportunity to follow one of the world’s most famous fashion magazine brands shooting a desk and a chair at its head office, desperately trying to find the off buttom.

However, we are all picking it up pretty quickly. Last week, Scandinavia’s biggest business daily, Dagens industri, was the first media house in Sweden to launch a daily morning television format in Periscope called Börsen på 3 minuter (The Stock Exchange in 3 Minutes).

It featured television host Yasmine Garpenwall and some of the most recognised market experts in Sweden with all parts of Dagens industri’s editorial staff commenting and analysing the movements of the market and stock exchange each morning.

As social media strategist at Dagens industri, I was overwhelmed to see how the format instantly was a success and rendered thousands of viewers. On day three, the #BlackMonday when the Asian market more or less collapsed, the programme had it’s first extra edition.

And this is, of course, only the beginning. The fashion magazine that was shooting a chair with shaky hands last week is now transmitting live from the catwalk of Stockholm Fashion Week. And some of Sweden’s most famous columnists, stand-up personalities, and media personalities are finding their audience with thousands and thousands of viewers who just love to hang out with their favourite stars.

And speaking of love, that is one af the genius success factors with Periscope: the built-in feature that enables you to send hearts that bubble up on the screen, visible to every body, when you press the screen.

This might just be the salvation for Twitter. For years, it has been fighting hatred and a nasty, rough debate climate with trolls in every corner. Periscope made Twitter so much more interesting, alive, and loveable in a heart beat.

When I was in Warsaw, Poland, at the end of May to speak at the Digital Journalism Days, television journalists from Ukraine spoke about how Periscope quickly had become an important and efficient tool to tell live stories instantly about demonstations and dramatic events with live television in a much simpler and efficient way than before.

The transmission on Periscope is available for 24 hours and then it’s erased. But, you have the possibility to save your transmission to your smartphone or iPad, and that way you can publish your film on YouTube, your Web site, or your blog if you want it to last longer in the digital world.

Periscope is like SnapChat, optimised to mobile platforms using the vertical format of the screen. I like that. All in all, it’s a very mobile way of consuming live television.

No, of course it does not provide the same quality standards as broadcast television, but my guess is that many mobile television consumers are prepared to trade a little bit of the image quality for the opportunity of being able to comment on a live show. Of course, the comment function can be turned off, if needed or preferred.

So, have you tried it yet? Ten million users have registered an account since the launch in the end of March.

Can you see possibilities for your brand to reach out and connect with new audiences via Periscope? Probably.

My best advice: Get out there. We all live in a yellow submarine. It’s about time you raise your Periscope – a great tool for any news media business that loves innovation and communication.

About Frida Boisen

Frida Boisen is editor-in-chief of GT in Gothenburg, Sweden. She can be reached at frida.boisen@gt.se. This post is part of the Media Leaders blog on INMA.org.